I went for a SHORT worship walk when we returned from California. My infusion had been delayed until we returned and between that and the trip, I was fatigued. My body was definitely obeying my auto-immune diseases and not what I was telling it to do.
As I walked and worshiped, I zeroed in on the chorus to the song “I Speak Jesus.” One word in that chorus kept echoing in my mind—strongholds.
“Your name is power, Your name is healing, Your name is life. Break every stronghold, Shine through the shadows, Burn like a fire.” [Songwriters: Jesse Reeves, Dustin Smith, Abby Benton, Kristen Dutton, Carlene Prince, Raina Pratt]
2Corinthians 10:4 speaks of strongholds. “the weapons of our warfare are not worldly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds.”
Stronghold. The word means a fortified military defense, a fortress. Paul understood that we cannot rely on human strategy and wisdom to pull down strongholds. It requires God’s power. The only way to be successful in the pulling down of the strongholds in our life is to abandon our own methods, our worldly attitudes and obey the Lord’s commands.
That is exactly what the children of Israel did when faced with the first “stronghold” in the Promised Land—the walls of Jericho. They obeyed what the LORD told them to do, and the stronghold was demolished.
As I sang that chorus over and over, I began to speak Jesus over the strongholds in my life—over my auto-immune diseases, over the medication side-effects, over the fatigue that too often dominates.
What stronghold do you have in your life? The first step is to identify. The second is to speak the powerful name of Jesus over it.